Wool: An Unexpected Journey
by AuthorDMAndrews
Summary: Hailstorm climbs to his death amid painful humor, terrible puns and a rather shirty staircase...


**WOOL – An Unexpected Journey**

If the laughs don't kill you, the puns will

Part 1 – Hailstorm

THE CHILDREN WERE laughing while Hailstorm climbed to his death; he could hear them squealing in delight as only sadistic children do. While they thundered in sick applause, Hailstorm took his time, each step an opportunity to practice a little of the tap dancing he had so often yearned to master, dancing his way around and around, up then down, then up again, the spiral staircase, tap shoes ringing out on metal treads.

The treads, like his father's once-shiny shoes, showed signs of wear. Paint clung to them in feeble chips, mostly in the corners and undersides, where they were safe from errant dancers. Hailstorm's footwork sent clouds of dust down upon those below, triggering splutters, shaking fists, curses, and calls for mirrors and magnets as flakes of rust hit unprotected eyes. Hailstorm could feel the vibrations in the railing, he could feel it in the water, he could feel it in the earth, he could smell it in the air; much that once was is lost; for none now live that remember it. He stopped, shook his head, and looked down. Men were running up the staircase, intent on doing him harm.

That always amazed him: how centuries of bare palms and booted feet had not yet bent the staircase out of all recognition. Instead it bent the structure one molecule at a time, each life warping it a little more, even as the silo warped that life. And they were a pretty warped bunch in the silo, truth be told. But back to the staircase foreshadowing: each step was slightly bowed from generations of traffic, the edge rounded down like a protruding lip. In the center, there was almost no trace of the tiny wicked spikes that once gave the treads their grip (and dissuaded most forms of dance). Their absence could only be inferred by the spikes to either side, the small but sharp points rising from the flat steel like a bed of nails, eager to pierce the sole of unwary travelers.

Hailstorm lifted one of his snazzy shoes to the next step, pressed down the ball and heel, emitting two crisp taps, and then did it again. He was going to have to dance a lot faster to stay ahead of his pursuers.

The staircase groaned. It often did, especially when Hailstorm was treading the boards, so to speak. Sometimes it thought it might just collapse under the weight of the men who would invariably chase the light-footed annoyance. Serves them right if it did! The staircase sighed and thought about what the untold years had done to its once fine spikes and bright pink paintwork. It was not meant for such an existence or for such abuse. It wanted dusting and a lick of new paint, oh and two persons at a time thank-you-very-much. It dreamed of being wider, less tightly spiraled. It felt constricted, threading through the buried silo like the cardboard tube in a roll of cheap toilet paper. The ephemeral life forms about it knew little of its true purpose: it was designed as an emergency exit, not a thoroughfare for dancers and heavy-booted men. The fat ones were the worst. How they made its metal strain! If only the fools would work out how to use the door on each level clearly labeled "elevator". And then there were the grains. Old grains of wheat trapped in the nooks and crannies, unseen and forgotten to the beings who went about their business every day. But they irritated the staircase, it wanted to pluck the grains from its metallic crevasses. They were like itches that could not be reached. Whose idea was it to use an old grain silo, anyway?

Another floor went by – a pizza-shaped division of various cheese larders dating back to the beginning when the silo was first supplied. Some of the cheeses had matured well and a pungent smell hit Hailstorm's nostrils as he passed on by. As he ascended the last few levels, the last climb he would ever take (and he would not have taken any after his first if it was up to the staircase), the sounds of childish derangement rained down even louder from above. This was the laughter of youth, of souls more warped than the children, who did not know their own mind and, to be honest, probably never would. Alive and deluded, dribbling spittle down the stairwell, and quite oblivious to Hailstorm's intent to go _outdoors._

As he neared the upper level, one young voice rang out above the others, and Hailstorm remembered his own childhood in the silo – all the dancing and the tedious games of hide-and-seek. Back then, the stuffy concrete cylinder had felt, with its floors and floors of shopping departments and toyshops and ultrasonic gardens and petrification rooms with their tangles of pipes, like a vast empire, a wide expanse one could never fully explore, a labyrinth he and his friends could get lost in forever (unless playing hide-and-seek, when Hailstorm was always found in less than five minutes).

But those days were more than thirty years distant. Hailstorm's childhood now felt like something two or three lifetimes ago, something someone else had enjoyed. Though, to be fair, yesterday felt much the same. That's dementia for you.

At the top of the spiral stairway, Hailstorm's hand ran out of railing and he went down heavily. "Tarnation!" He got up and dusted himself down. He had been climbing these stairs longer than he had been sheriff, and the ending to the railing still got him every time. The curvy bar of worn steel ended as the stairwell emptied into the most dangerous rooms of the entire silo complex: the cafeteria and adjoining morgue. Okay, the latter wasn't really dangerous; if you were in there the danger had passed away, but, unfortunately, so had you. It was the cafeteria that threatened the lives of all daily, and eating there was a bit like Russian roulette, or would have been if anyone knew what Russian Roulette was. That is why it stood next to the morgue. It was just practical. The mocking squeals were level with him now. He chased them and they scattered.

Hailstorm saw Bert drawing colourful pictures of funfairs and green fields in chalk on the tiled ground. His wife, Mary, sat behind a table arranged with spoons of sugar, brown-paper packages wrapped up in strings, and a rather large carpet bag. They waved at Hailstorm from across the room.

Hailstorm didn't think to wave back. Grumpy so-and-so. He looked past the adults to the sign above the serving hatch: "If the pies don't kill you, the broth will". His eyes skipped down to the screen on the wall. It was the largest uninterrupted vista of their ugly world. It was a morning scene. Dawn's dim light coated bright green hills that had hardly changed since Hailstorm was a boy. They sat, just as they always had, surrounded by giant red toadstools and topped with fluffy white clouds that looked like cotton wool. Beyond the stately rolling crests of these verdant hills, the top of a familiar skyline, awash with color, caught the morning rays in splendid bursts of light breaking upon three towers of white and a castle of emerald. And, leading from the foreground, through the toadstools, and over the hill to the cityscape beyond, ran a road made of yellow bricks. It was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. People, it was said, once lived there, but now it lay empty.

A child, flying from under a table, launched himself at Hailstorm, but the sheriff used some fancy footwork to dodge the assailant and the child squealed as he soared like a comet into Mary's brown-paper packages. By the look on his face, the packages didn't seem to be his favorite things.

Hailstorm thought suddenly of the lottery he and Amazon had won the year of her death. He still had the ticket, even if he wasn't quite the ticket anymore. He carried it everywhere (except in the shower, of course). One of these kids could have been theirs. They really should have kept a better eye on him as he was growing up, especially after all the effort they'd put into having a child: hanging Gaelic speakers over the bed, putting two dynamos under the mattress, a printer ribbon in Amazon's hair, war paint under Hailstorm's eyes – all of it ridiculous and desperate and fun (though not for the two Irishmen).

Hailstorm turned away from the projection on the screen and walked toward his office, situated between the life-threatening cafeteria and the silo's big round faded-green door. As he covered that ground his thoughts went to the struggle that once took place there, a struggle of ghosts he'd had to walk through every day for the last three years. And he knew – if he turned and hunted that expansive view on the wall – if he squinted past the shining sun and garish colors, if he followed the yellow-brick road up the hill, he could pick out her quiet form. There, on that hill, his wife could be seen. She stood frozen to the spot, a victim of direct exposure to the gaudy colors and outrageous tastes poisoning the outdoors.

Maybe.

It was getting too easy to see, but the picture wasn't clear. Not yet. Thank goodness. The lenses would soon need dirtying again. So Hailstorm simply chose not to look. He walked through the place of his wife's ghastly struggle, where disconcerting memories lay eternal, that scene of her sudden spirit of adventurism, of her leaving the silo without her pocket handkerchief, and entered his office.

"Well, look who's up early," Barnes said, smiling.

Hailstorm noted the lack of the bell on the desk. It had always been there until last night. It was strange to see Barnes and no bell.

Hailstorm's deputy closed a metal drawer on the filing cabinet, a terrible screech like fingernails down a blackboard singing from its ancient joints. He picked up a steaming mug, then noted Hailstorm's tap shoes. "You feeling okay, boss?"

Hailstorm nodded. He pointed to the rack of keys behind the desk. "Holding cell," he said.

The deputy's smile drooped into a confused frown. He set down the mug and turned to retrieve the key. While his back was turned, Hailstorm gave a couple of taps on the floor, rubbed the sharp, cool steel in his palm one last time, then placed the star flat on the desk. Barnes turned and held out the key. Hailstorm took it.

"You need me to grab the mob?"

Deputy Barnes jabbed a thumb back toward the cafeteria. Unless someone was in cuffs, the only reason they went into the cell was for cage fighting.

"No," Hailstorm said. "They won't get past the cafeteria anyway."He jerked his head toward the holding cell, beckoning his deputy to follow.

He turned – the chair behind the desk squeaked as Barnes rose to join him (it was such a noisy office, and the reason Hailstorm had chucked the bell) – and Hailstorm completed his march. The key slid in with ease. There was a sharp clack from the well-built and well-maintained inner organs of the door. The barest squeak from the hinges, a determined step (and a quick couple of taps on the floor), a shove and a clank, and the ordeal was over.

"Boss? Why have you locked me in here?"

"Oh drat! Sorry," Hailstorm apologized, unlocking the cell, pulling Barnes out and taking his place. Locking the door again, he passed the key through the bars to the deputy.

"What's going on, boss?"

"Get the mayor," Hailstorm said. He let out a sigh that heavy breath he'd been holding in three years. "Tell her I want to go outdoors."

"Out the round green door?"

"Yes."

"The round green door with the shiny yellow brass knob?"

"YES! Now can you get the mayor?"

This is (a rather bad) parody of the first part of the first instalment of the hugely popular Wool, by Hugh Howey (with a few other references to other stories thrown in for bad measure). D.M. Andrews is an author of young adult, middle-grade, and other fiction, including a couple of parodies.


End file.
